Vikings Creator: Violence & Sex On Game Of Thrones Is ‘Unnecessary’

Michael Hirst, creator of Vikings has slammedGame of Thrones for its gratuitous sex and violence while defending a similar scene in his show.

Vikings has much less nudity when compared to Game of Thrones, primarily due to regulations imposed by US network TV, but it did shock the fans at the end of its third season when it showed a naked french noblewoman being whipped by Count Odo (Own Roe) in his dungeon.

“I feel like a lot of other people that sex in Game Of Thrones and other shows is completely gratuitous and unnecessary and a lot of the violence is gratuitous… It’s largely to shock.”

Hirst meanwhile defended the sex and violence in Vikings calling it is a part of “a big storyline, a big pay-off. It’s part of (Odo’s) character so it’s not gratuitous.”

Vikings Season 4 premiered February 18th on History channel and will be the series’ longest with 20 episodes.

Amazes me that sex and nudity are complained about more than violence. It’s OK to rip heads off, torture, eviscerations, cannibalism; but don’t even think about showing a couple having sex. Utterly bizarre as far as I am concerned.

TV is ‘Unnecessary’ and TV shows are ‘Unnecessary’ and blah blah blah. Who cares. This is the entertainment business and I am entertained by GoT. This isn’t some sort of documentary. Meh. I love my GoT.

Sex is part of life and I don’t understand why people, mainly Americans, try to hide that fact.
Sex and violence is obviously core parts of these worlds, failing to depict the world as is and providing a false image instead is why Vikings is failing where GoT is not. Vikings does not dare to be great, ironically.

HBO seems to love gratuitous nudity. I just recently binged “True Blood” since I’m more of a book fan. That had unnecessary nudity too, e.g. the first time Sookie goes to fairyland, there’s all these fully dressed fairies milling around but for some inexplicable reason, one woman is naked?

Agree 100%. At this point, the gratuitous sex and violence are just annoying in GoT (as well as the books). I wonder if books could get out sooner if the writer didn’t feel the need to spend so much time detailing the (at their core) same gory and/or sexually violent scenes.

And to the commenter who says “sex is part of life”, “part of life” sex would be much more palatable than the repeated sexual assaults and abuses we’re shown. Off the top of my head I can think of multiple full-nude non-consensual scenes, but I can’t seem to remember any consensual sex scenes with nudity. It seems that when sex starts being consensual, they need to do a “fade”….because that’s too risque? Terrible message.